The objective of this proposal is to establish the biochemical mechanism of the cardiomyopathy resulting from prolonged treatment with the anticancer agent, adriamycin. We propose to correlate adriamycin treatment with myocardial mucleic acid metabolism and the synthesis of specific myocardial structural and functional protein in a well documented animal model. Specifically, with this continuation proposal, the relationship between acute and chronic adriamycin treatment will be investigated by measuring RNA synthesis rate and the number of active RNA polymerase molecules. The results of these studies combined with information on protein synthesis will be correlated with the histological observation of the progressive, dose dependent cardiomyopathy associated with adriamycin therapy.